Bayt Nabala is identical with the ancient
Beth Nabala/Beth Nablata.
Ottoman period In 1526 Bayt Nabala was part of the
Ottoman Empire,
nahiya (subdistrict) of
Ramla under the Liwa of al-Quds. According to Ottoman tax records, the village paid 500
akçe annually. In the 1596
tax record, Bayt Nabala was categorized under the
Liwa of Gaza, with a population of 54
Muslim households, an estimated 297 people. They paid a fixed tax-rate of 33,3 % on a number of
crops, including
wheat,
barley,
olives, fruit, as well as on goats, beehives and a press that was used for processing either olives or grapes, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 8,688
akçe. In the
17th century, the village received an influx of refugees from neighboring
Beit Qufa, who had to abandon their home due to unsettled conditions. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Beit Nabala belonged to the Nahiyeh (sub-district) of
Lod that encompassed the area of the present-day city of
Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut in the south to the present-day city of
El'ad in the north, and from the foothills in the east, through the Lod Valley to the outskirts of
Jaffa in the west. This area was home to thousands of inhabitants in about 20 villages, who had at their disposal tens of thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land. According to historian
Roy Marom "Bayt Nabālā was a major hub for the
Qays and Yaman conflicts in the area." Bayt Nabala's first residents were the Qaysi "al-Sharāqa" clan. Local tradition holds that a Yamani immigrant called Salām came and camped in the caves near Bayt Nabālā.When a conflict broke out between Bayt Nabālā and
al-Ḥadītha, Salām took advantage of the plight of the residents of Bayt Nabālā to gain control over them, and his three “sons” – Zayd, Nakhla and Ṣāfī – settled in the village. Relations between the clans were strained, and riots broke out between them. A Qaysī leader, named ‘Ābid, from the old al-Sharāqa clan, led his forces and allies, from
Jayyūs and
Dayr Abū Mash‘al, against the supporters of the Yaman in
Qibyā and
Dayr Ṭarīf. With the support of the powerful and influential Yamanī families – al-Khawāja from
Ni‘līn and the
Abu Ghosh family – Ṣāfī succeeded in persuading the authorities to arrest ‘Ābid and eliminate him. Ṣāfī then extended his control over Dayr Ṭarīf,
al-Ṭīra,
Qūla,
Fajja and
Mulabbis. In 1838
Edward Robinson noted Bayt Nabala from the
tower in
Ramle. In 1870
Victor Guérin visited and found the village to have about 900 inhabitants.
Socin found from an official Ottoman village list from about the same year that Bayt Nabala had 108 houses and a population of 427, though the population count included men, only.
Hartmann found that
Bet Nebala had 118 houses. In 1882, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine described Bayt Nabala as being of moderate size, situated at the edge of a plain. Since the end of the 19th century, the inhabitants of Beit Nabala cultivated the lands of the deserted village of
Jindas. In the
1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the
British Mandate authorities, Bait Nabala had a population of 1,324 inhabitants; 1,321
Muslims and 3 Christians, increasing in the
1931 census to 1758, all Muslims, in a total of 471 houses. In the
1945 statistics, the village had a population of 2,310 Muslims, while 123 dunams were classified as built-up public areas. Deir Tarif 1942.jpg|Bayt Nabala 1942 1:20,000 Beit Nabala 1945.jpg|Bayt Nabala 1945 1:250,000 Lydda and Ramla area - 9 July 1948.PNG|Depopulated villages in the
Ramle Subdistrict 1948 war and aftermath Benny Morris writes that the village residents abandoned it on Arab orders on 13 May 1948. However, according to
Walid Khalidi, this cannot be confirmed. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the village site in 1992: "The site is overgrown with grass, thorny bushes, and cypress and fig trees. It lies on the east side of the settlement of Beyt Nechemya, due east of the road from the Lod (Lydda) airport. On its fringes are the remains of quarries and crumbled houses. Sections of walls from the houses still stand. The surrounding land is cultivated by the Israeli settlements." ==Culture==